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119. There are a number of subjects in which the Organization, following the recommendations of the Hot Springs Conference, will have an interest in common with that of the International Labour Organization, and others in which their interests will be closely related. Conditions of agricultural labour and work in the field of co-operative organizations are cases in point. 120. The International Labour Organization has adopted a number of conventions and recommendations concerning agriculture, and has appointed a committee concerned specificially with agriculture. Labour conferences of American States and the first Inter-American Social Security Conference dealt with the extension of social services to farm families ; and a permanent committee on migration for settlement has been proposed under the auspices of the International Labour Organization. The Pood and Agriculture Organization should agree with the appropriate authorities of the International Labour Organization on arrangements for co-operation [Art. XII.] 2. Regional and National Organizations 121. The Organization will need the co-operation and support not only of Governments and other international authorities, but also of regional and national scientific and economic institutions, both public and private, which are concerned with food and agriculture. Experts from regional and national institutions might be appointed as members of the standing advisory committees of the Organization ; members of the staffs and research workers from these institutions should be associated for varying periods with the work of its special committees ; and the Organization should entrust tasks to these institutions and engage in joint undertakings with them. It should explore the possibility of concluding arrangements with appropriate institutions whereby they would carry on work on behalf of the. Organization or in association with it. [Art. XII.] 122. Precedents of the kind exist. For example, the Health Organization of the League of Nations entrusted to the National Institute for Medical Research (London) the custody and distribution of international standards for many biological preparations and other related tasks ; and a Conference on Rural Hygiene in the Far East selected the Nutrition Research Laboratory at Conoor, India, to act as the centre for research in nutrition in that region. 123. There are advantages in having abstracting and other information services supplied as far as possible by institutions that are already doing outstandingly good work of this kind. The Organization should therefore seek arrangements whereby certain present information services, which are extensive and valuable, might receive wider circulation and perhaps be extended to those parts of the field which are not now covered. The Organization should explore such possibilities, for example, with the appropriate authorities of the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux, the Pasteur Institutes, the Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences, and national research councils or academies in various countries. [Art. I, XII.] E. EXPENSES 124. Under the provisions of Articles IV and XVIII of the Constitution the Conference is empowered to approve annual budgets for each financial year after that in which the Organization is established and to determine the apportionment among member nations of the required total contributions thereto. 125. In regard to both these matters, however, it would be convenient if specific proposals, relating to the year in which the Organization is established, were to be formulated in advance by the Interim Commission, both to provide the Organization with a financial basis for immediate operation and to afford the Governments of the United Nations an indication of the measure of financial obligation involved at the outset by acceptance of the Commission's proposals. 126. The Commission has accordingly prepared provisional estimates, based on varying hypotheses, of the expenses likely to be incurred by the Organization during the first five years of operation. For this purpose it has drawn on the experience of existing international organizations and has had the assistance of a number of their officials. 127. After careful consideration of provisional estimates so prepared, the Commission recommends that the average expenditure by the Organization during the first five years should be estimated at about $5,000,000 per annum. 128. Considerably less than this amount is likely to be spent in the first year, however, by reason of unavoidable delays in the recruitment of the necessary expert staff and in the initial preparation of operational plans. The Commission, therefore, recommends that the budget of the Organization for the financial year in which the Constitution comes into force be that set forth in Annex II to the Constitution. A capital fund will be needed to meet the unusual expenses involved in getting the new international organization started and to provide funds at the beginning of each financial year before national contributions have been fully received. 129. The Commission has found it difficult to devise a wholly satisfactory scale of apportionment of expenses. It has considered whether such a scale might be formulated, based on such factors as capacity to pay modified —e.g., by the desirability of maximum and minimum limits to contributions, the importance of agricultural production, national income, foreign trade, &c. If this could have been done and if world conditions were normal, such a scale might have been adopted by the Conference for an indefinite period, or, at least, for the five-year period referred to above. The abnormal circumstances created by war and enemy occupation, however, and the impossibility of knowing when they will terminate, render it impossible to formulate a scale which is likely to be regarded as satisfactory except for a very short period. During the first or second year the Conference probably will wish to consider, in the light of the conditions then prevailing, the equity of the scale which the Commission now recommends. This scale, recommended for temporary use, is based upon a relationship among the member nations growing out of that accepted by them in respect of pre-war international organizations, but adjusted as follows (a) The assumption of 54-5 per cent, of the allocations by the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China ; (&) The scaling-down of the allocations, as a measure of temporary financial relief, for those countries that are occupied by the enemy, or that have, in consequence of the war, suffered from major economic disasters ; and (c) The placing of certain countries on a uniform minimum allocation. The result of (b) and (c) has been substantially to increase the temporary allocations to the remaining countries. When world conditions improve, the proportions allocated to these countries will have to be correspondingly reduced.

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